5-Year-Old Boy Learns to Write First Word Thanks to Gwen Stefani’s 'Hollaback Girl'
Max Jones surprised his mother when she started singing "Hollaback Girl."
— -- One kindergarten student, who is learning how to read and write, surprised his mother when he used a hit Gwen Stefani song to help him spell the word "banana."
Mother of one Norah Jones often plays the radio-edit of the 2004 hit single, "Hollaback Girl," in which the former No Doubt frontwoman croons, "This ... is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!"
"We ride the subway all the time and he listens to that in the headphones so he hears it a lot," the New York City woman told ABC News.
Still, she was shocked when her 5-year-old son Max started using the song to help him write his first word, "banana."
"He has these words that he spells out, and writes them on flashcards. So we do that every night," his mother recalled. "But one day he started writing something ... and it wasn't anything that we had practiced before."
It was the word "banana."
"And he just started singing the chorus to 'Hollaback Girl' and I was able to [record] that last bit," Jones, 28, said, laughing.
Jones posted the video to her Twitter account with the caption, "When you realize @gwenstefani taught your 5 year old how to write his first word." It quickly got the attention of Stefani herself, who retweeted the video.
"I thought it was so neat," Jones said.
She added that it's no wonder her son used the song to help him write his first word. "He's a very smart boy," she continued. "He's very sweet ... and he loves dancing to it."
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